About Me
Welcome to Vadani Kaval Gheta!
I think it was a rainy afternoon in January 2007 when a friend called me to ask about some recipe. I sent it to her by email at that time and few more times after that. I was already writing a blog at the time so I decided to collect all the recipes under one blog roof and Vadani Kaval Gheta was born.
I grew up eating and cooking Maharashtrian and North Karnataka food. That is still my favorite comfort food. After coming to the US, I started experimenting with various local vegetables and different cuisines. I love food, so cooking and eating possibilities were endless. Internet was not yet broadband and Google was new too! Searching for recipes was not as much fun as it is now. I used to mostly depend on cookbooks from the library and some TV shows on public channel.
An interesting thing happened when I attended a seminar about industrialization of food and eating habits. I became 100% vegan. Soon after, I started experimenting with raw food as a result of another food seminar. It was really fun creating various tasty recipes without cooking it. But I missed the warm food that I grew up with and decided to start eating cooked food again. I still stayed vegan for a year or so and slowly introduced just milk and yogurt back in my diet. I am now a lacto-vegetarian but try to cook as much vegan food as I can.
The blog has captured my whole journey with food. I crave for homemade khichadi, varan-bhat after eating out and after long vacations. Since there is not a single Indian restaurant in the vicinity that serves Maharashtrian cuisine, I have to make things like Pohe, Amati-Bhat at home if I feel like eating them! My Current focus is on cooking with local ingredients and on traditional Maharashtrian cooking.
I wrote a series of five articles for a popular Marathi magazine, ‘Maher’, last year and enjoyed all the fame that came with it.
Besides cooking, I enjoy embroidery, knitting, painting and pottery. I use pottery that I have made in past few years to showcase my food. I have also shared few knitting projects on the blog. Current blog header image is showcasing my painting of two peppers.
